John 3:16-21
• A deal too good to be true? Give you a 20 for every 1 in your wallet? Too good to be true? Yep it is. GODFATHER movie line ‘I’m going to make you an offer you cannot refuse’. God our Father has done the same, you would think.
• John 3:16: Most well know verse in the Bible which will also make it the greatest evidence against those who knew it and blew it by not accepting God’s forgiveness based upon what this passage says.
• BACKGROUND: Jesus is visited at night by a prominent Pharisee named NICODEMUS.(NICK AT NIGHT).
Imagine Billy Graham at Harvard(room full of most distinguished and educated professors) One message to them: YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN! One of the most learned men in Israel needs to hear one message: You must be born again. Not you must work harder, try more, do more, ask more, be more religious…BORN AGAIN.
NICODEMUS did not own a bar, run a brothel, publish Playboy magazine….he was one of the most respected and accomplished in the community and the religious community. Room full of Pastors, Deacons, their wives and Sunday School teachers or speaking to rescue mission. SAME MESSAGE.
16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. 18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. 20 "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."
WHAT IT OFFERS: 16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
1. Offer reminds us the DESIRE of a God who loves us. loved the world, Not just some of us but the whole world of us.
2. Offers shows us the DEPTH in that God was willing to His own Son to make the offer possible. gave His only begotten Son
3. Offer shows us the DEMAND in that it is available ONLY to those who believe by faith and trust in what His Son did in order to save them. whoever believes in Him
4. Offer shows us the DIFFERENCE it makes in that we are kept from persishing and receive ETERNAL LIFE. not perish, but have eternal life
a. PERISH:.
We live in a world filled with worry about health issues. Heart attack, cancer? Telethons and other fundraises to help protect us and heal us from these concerns. ONE DISEASE WE ARE ALL SURE TO GET: DEATH
GOD KNOWS OUR GREATEST NEED: Wages of sin is DEATH
b. More than eternal existence but Life beyond belief
WHY THIS OFFER IS MADE: 17 "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
1. That SALVATION might be made possible: might be saved through Him
Ever get a phone call or have somebody show up at the door obviously selling something. They begin with all this sales pitch stuff and never really tell you what they are even selling. You want them to at least let you know what they are trying to sell you. I can tell you right now that I don’t need JESUS TELLS US RIGHT UP FRONT WHY HE IS HERE AND WHAT HE IS BRINGING US.
The Bible does tells us that Jesus will ultimately come as our Judge and we see that very vividly in the last part of the Book of Revelation but God did not send Jesus to the world to be a judge but to save the world through His death for us on the cross.
1 Tim 2:3-4 ) For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior,
{4} who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
“desires” speaks of God’s “will”, “wish”, what He “loves”, what He finds “pleasure” in.
Bible doesn’t say, “Go into all the world and tell those dirty rotten sinners that they’re going to hell”. Not send the BODY of CHRIST to Condemn the world
(Mark 16:15) And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
2. He did not come to Judge us because that has already been done.
18 "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
You and I live in a lost world, and we’ll not wait until the final judgment to see that we are lost. Our position is something like a man who is in prison being asked whether or not he will accept a pardon. He is not on trial but is already condemned. He is already in prison waiting for execution. But the gospel tells him a pardon is offered to him. The point is, will you accept the pardon? How wonderfully clear that is. The gospel is to save those who are already lost. J. Vernon MCGEE
The question of the gospel is not whether you will be saved or lost but since you are lost will you be saved.
3. If you have not believed in Jesus to save you then you already find yourself in a position of unbelief even if you don’t publically state that you are an unbeliever.
4. SALVATION COMES When we rest our faith, surrender ourselves upon the NAME/AUTHORITY of God’s ONLY Son and His finished work on the Cross for us.
A Minister and his unbelieving barber were walking down the street as their conversation turned to the love of God. Said the barber to the preacher, "If God was as loving as you say, why does He permit all the poverty, disease, and squalor that exists in the world? I cannot believe that a loving God would permit these things."
The minister was silent until they met a man who was especially unkempt and filthy. His hair was hanging down his neck and he had a half-inch of stubble on his face. Then he said, "You can’t be a very good barber or you would not permit a man like that to continue living in this neighborhood without a haircut or shave."
Indignantly the barber answered: "Why blame me for that man*s condition? I can’t help it that he is like that. He has never come into my shop; why, I could fix him up and make him look like a million dollars, if he’d only let me!"
Giving the barber a penetrating look, the minister said: "Then don*t blame God for allowing people to continue in their evil ways, when He is constantly inviting them to come and be saved. The reason people are slaves to sin and evil habits is that they refuse the One who died to save and deliver them."
WHY THIS OFFER IS REFUSED: 19 "This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.
One of the first things a person needs is light. When miners get trapped in mine collapses one of the first things the rescuers try to get to them is LIGHT. Sin is just like the darkness surrounding, disorienting, and trapping the lost diver. Without light a person would just grope helplessly through life.
1. Judgment comes because we have not responded appropriately to what the LIGHT has shown us.
Get up in the morning, turn on the light and look in the bathroom mirror. You have two choices. You say, ‘Hey, looks good, I will go with this’(some hairstyles I see) or, ‘The light has really shown me something I was not seeing in the dark and I better prepare myself to come before others’.
GOD’S LIGHT: His Word, our conscience, other godly folks he puts in our lives are all part of His way of confronting us with what is true about ourselves and we must choose to deal with it or scurry away from the light like a bunch of cockroaches going back to their darkness.
2. MEN LOVED DARKNESS: They did not just choose they darkness but they have a great affection for the things of darkness.
Spiritual darkness as any darkness is simply the absence of the LIGHT. You don’t have DARK SWITCHES on the wall of your house. You just make a choice not to use the ones for the light.
Don’t turn on God’s truth….remove God’s truth through His Word….get believers not share any truth either by what they say or how they live their lives. DARKNESS HAPPENS – What men love is not so much the darkness but the absence of the light that exposes what they don’t want seen.
3. MEN HATE LIGHT: Light helps us see but also shows us things we might not want to see.
20 "For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
1. Don’t like light because of what it exposes: Evil things – the wrong people do
2. Don’t come to the light: Hard or impossible to get some people inside a church.
21 "But he who practices the truth comes to the Light, so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God."
1. A believer should have no fear or dislike for the light but should seek more and more ways to get closer to it.
2. There should be something brand new and very different about us because we have come to the light.
Joe was a drunk, miraculously converted in a street outreach mission. Before his conversion he’d gained a reputation as a derelict and dirty wino for whom there was no hope. But following his conversion to Christ, everything changed. Joe became the most caring person at the mission. He spent his days there, doing whatever needed to be done.
There was never anything he was asked to do that he considered beneath him. Whether it was cleaning up vomit left by some sick alcoholic, or scrubbing toilets after men had left them filthy, Joe did it all with a heart of gratitude.
He could be counted on to feed any man who wandered in off the streets, undress and tuck him into bed, when he was too out-of-it to take care of himself.
One evening, after the mission director delivered his evangelistic message to the usual crowd of sullen men with drooped heads, one of them looked up, came down to the altar and kneeled to pray, crying out for God to help him change.
The repentant drunk kept shouting, “Oh God, make me like Joe! Make me like Joe! Make me like Joe!” The director leaned over and said, “Son, wouldn’t it be better if you prayed ‘make me like Jesus?”
After thinking about it for a few moments, the man looked up with an inquisitive expression and asked, “Is He like Joe?”
Are we living in such a way that you are reminding people of the only ‘forgotten’ Son of God?
DENNIS BROWN and the MAN IN THE FRONT YARD ON ADMIRAL STREET
Although Nicodemus came by night he was also coming to the Light. Jesus confronted him and Nicodemus would have to decide what to do with what he now knew."While Andrew Jackson was President of the United States, a man was given a court trial and condemned to die. President Jackson offered to pardon him but the condemned man refused the pardon. Prison authorities, the Attorney General of the United States, and others earnestly endeavored to convince the man to accept the pardon. They tried to impress upon him that it would not only spare his life, but that if he did not accept the pardon it would be an insult to the President. The man persisted…The Attorney General consulted the Supreme Court, asking whether legal authorities could not force the man to receive the pardon. The court ruled that the pardon was merely a printed statement until the man accepted it. If he rejected the pardon, it remained printed matter.
LIKE MONEY NEVER SPENT – Wallpaper you house with 20 dollar bills you are no richer
Salvation offered to all but to benefit from all its rich and enjoyable blessings, we must accept it.
An offer that to not accept is to reject. There are no fences to sit on between heaven and hell. YOU MUST BE BORN AGAIN!
